


The Fair Merman

by Nedrika



Category: Den lille Havfrue | The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, M/M, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 16:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20118340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nedrika/pseuds/Nedrika
Summary: No matter how much you may want something, it is not always fated to happen. No matter how much you sacrifice, you can never be sure how others will act.A retelling. Some things change, some say the same.





	The Fair Merman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).

The sun was setting as the fair merman swam towards the surface of the ocean waters for the first time, and the water grew blood red shafted through with amber and gold as he ascended from the cerulean depths. As anticipation drove him the power of his fins pushed him high from water into the thin air, and he surged into the cool air of the surface world with a rush. Above the waves the world was as beautiful as his sisters had described, with strange shapes in the sky that caught and amplified the colours of the sunlight that streamed around him and the small, shrill calls of the soaring, anemone-frilled fish that passed over his head in little shoals. Air was foreign to him, and he sucked great gasps into his ancestral lungs, and it was sweet and fresh against the brine on his tongue.

The shadow of a ship passed over him; it was larger than many of the wrecks that came down to them on the sea bed, starkly decorated in black with a thick white line along the flank and with three tall sturdy masts that stretched all the way up towards the sky, main course set but becalmed so that the ship swayed in place on the water and the resplendent pennants and banners that decorated the jib-boom and threaded amongst the shrouds hung limp against the rigging, the sailors dotted about it in idleness. Music came to him then, far different from any tune he had heard before and on instruments he had never imagined alongside the conch horns and ocean-rattling drums in his own domain, and with a depth of sound that could near rival the singing of the whales or when he and his siblings made a choir for the court of the Sea King. It drew him to it until he was alongside and as the ship hung low and the waves rolled high he could see in through the crystal walls of the rear side to the cabin, all decorated round with bright filigree and paint. Bright lamps hung on the walls to bathe the well-adorned room in a warm radiance, and shone on a laughing group of humans in richly decorated clothing made from materials that he had only ever seen on the dead men who sank to his father’s house, and in the centre of them stood one his own age, a prince of their realm, with handsome black eyes that glinted with mirth and matched his jet hair to stand against the pearl white of his skin. They were celebrating his birthday as the merman’s own people had, and as he easily passed among the small crowd he would smile, and it would be beautiful.

The prince left the cabin for the deck then, and as the fair merman swam round to see him again the sky exploded in hundreds of fireworks to herald the prince on deck as the broadside went off, roaring and rearing until he had to cling to the barnacles of the hull to gather his nerves. The crashing and booming continued on and on as the evening sunset burst into every colour and then their little stars fell around the ship and his nostrils burned from the powder. He resolved himself and as the flowers of light streamed around him and lit up the sea he pulled himself up a now abandoned gunport to see out onto the deck of the ship without being seen by any of the humans. 

It was sparsely lit, but he followed every movement of the dashing prince on the deck as they sang and caroused, and every snap and creak of the ship as it lulled. The sea was turning turbulent, and before long the fore course and stays were set and the hulking craft was on its way; the fair merman had to let go of his gunport to swim alongside them or be forcibly shaken loose as it ploughed through the waves. Shapes moved over the spots of light in the sea of the sky and the taste of the air on the fair merman’s tongue changed as the storm rolled in, the familiar pull and push of angering seas now unfamiliar in the new dimension of wind, rain and the low rumble of thunder in the distance that he had never experienced before. Jib set and sails reefed the ship continued into the fray, and when he trailed round to the stern he could see the prince back in the cabin talking seriously with the others in a way that puzzled the fair merman; the sea was at play, and yet they seemed to worry instead of take part. The ship herself seemed in good spirits, rolling and pitching with gusto as the sea tossed it about until there was a terrible crack and the mainmast fell and took the siding with it as it sloughed over the side. The change in balance rocked the hull as it was climbing a wave, and then they were all pulled over. Fore and mizzen sails hit the water with a slap that almost hit the fair merman as he dove underwater to escape the falling yards, and he understood at last that the humans were in danger and not happy to be with them in the ocean as his sisters had sung to those in wrecks before. They would all drown far before that, and it could not happen to the man with the deep expressive eyes and bright smile.

Lightning struck and in the bright white of its glare he couldn’t make out the lines of the prince anywhere; he dove heedlessly through the heavy sinking beams and rushing cannon until he found the prince swimming weakly to the surface, eyes shut to the brine and power failing him. He gathered the unresisting prince in his arms and with a few strong lashes of his tail they were at the surface, where they bobbed in the storm-tossed waves amongst the debris until morning light.

Dawn came with to a calm, clear sea and the prince still not awakened. The fair merman held him in strong arms that were wearied by strain and a mind unrested as he watched for any sign of consciousness on the face before him, seeing only the blush of life and the rise of lungs not augmented by gills. Now that he could see again he worried in earnest at the expressive face still like the figureheads of those sunken wrecks, and he brushed that pitch black hair free from his face; kissed his forehead, his cheek, his lips. 

At last they floated far enough that the very tops of the snow whitened mountains came into view, and he wearily swam towards the land. As he drew nearer he could make out a little white building set in the lush green of a land forest so alien against a knowledge of coral forests and kelp jungles, and he found it next to a little beach set around a calm, deep bay. He pulled the still body of the prince onto the white sand and arranged him in comfort, unsure enough of their different bodies to know how to help. Presently there came the loud toll of bells and there were people coming towards the beach, and so he fled to the rocks that jutted from the bay close enough to see and far enough to not be seen as he crouched down into the foam like a limpet. From his vantage he saw a young woman cut off from the group and go towards the prone prince, unsure and then loud and animated. They bustled around the figure some minutes before he came around and smiled at the woman who now leant over him, and talked with the people she had summoned. 

When at length he stood and was guided from the beach he sent no look back, never guessing that he had been dragged from death or that his saviour watched him still, before sliding from his perch to return sadly to his father’s court.

On his return he was pressed for all manner of answers, but could never bring himself to answer. Occasionally he would return to the bay but there was never any sign of the prince, and so he attempted distraction in the usual manner of the Sea Court; through current races, sport fishing, shark baiting or spear contests. Nothing held his attention, his mind constantly returning to black eyes. For several neaps his sisters would repeatedly ask him to join them in song, claiming that his voice was the pride of the court and that none other could harmonise with their own, then would weary at the sad sound he made amongst them. Eventually their patience waned and they pulled the truth from him; in short order the news was around the mer-folk and one of their number recalled the decorated stern and white paint of the ship, and where it lately had been moored. 

The prince’s palace was stunning to behold, and many times after his first expedition with his sisters the fair merman would return to watch the sun bounce eagerly from the polished marble and intricate carvings, and hope to see the handsome prince. At first he saw him walking along the shore and he thrilled that the prince had made it home safe and healthy. Long after this initial curiosity had been sated he sat perched on his outcrop to watch the prince’s long, sure strides through the sand, and thereafter would sometimes spy him reading on a balcony, or listening to a band as he was rowed across the bay. Every time the fair merman caught sight of him he remembered holding that body to his chest and kissing his forehead, and yet he was utterly unknown. The appearance of the prince on those visits was never guaranteed but he learned of the good work that the prince was doing from the idle chat of the farmers, heard the fantastical tales of humans in far off lands from travellers, and the chants of their religious people told him of the afterlife that waited for them once they had used up an existence far shorter than that of any of his own people, who lived three full centuries to end their lives turned to foam floating on the sea. It seemed to him a fair bargain, to have a short life full of all the wonders of towering mountains and distant cities and lively ships, and then to survive death to another eternity.

It troubled him, enough that he went to consult his old and wise grandmother; too frail now to venture up to the air now but learned in the ways of humans and mer-folk alike. He spoke of the afterlife and foam and the lives they led, and she listened quietly without interrupting even as her face grew sad.

“Grandmother, I want an afterlife to learn forever and flit amongst the beautiful things in the world, is there no way I can get one?”

“There is one way, although you should not want it, for we live long and happy lives with each other and will be free after. If you cannot be persuaded, however, you will need a human, as a creature with a soul, to love you so deeply that they would pledge themselves to you forever and join your bodies together as one; at the moment your bodies are one his soul will be shared with you and be one as well; but the ways of man are strange and I fear you will not find one to pledge you, as both their bodies and bonds are too different.”

The fair merman did not hear her and instead thanked her for her counsel and left, passing by the grand hall where his father and siblings were giving a ball, and the music and song of his family was sweet and melodic so that his heart burned. He floated for a while by the window, watching them through the crystal and wishing there was a way that he could make them understand why he was leaving; he knew that they would argue and shout inheritance and keep him trapped down there with them, and so left his home with a final, happy memory of them all basking in their enjoyment of each other.

He rode a friendly current out into the wastelands far out into unfamiliar dunes, towards the vast rocky crevasse that split their lands; his current arced into the outer rim of a whirlpool and he had to tear his way from it with brute strength. The farthest tendrils of that whirlpool edged out towards another, then another, and in the distance he could make out the shadow of a maelstrom, the like of which he had never seen. He dodged and weaved through their currents, though they tore the accessories of mother-of-pearl and obsidian from his body and he had to braid his hair into a long queue that trailed behind him like some of the sailors he had seen in the shrouds, that first night on the surface.

Thus he progressed on through the roiling seas until he came to the garden of the Sea Witch he sought. Her house was ugly and crooked, built of the remains of the drowned sailors that sank down to meet her, and decorated all around with long grasping hydras and anemones that waved and grabbed at the fair merman as he swam above them, holding high the bodies of the others that had come before him as gruesome trophies in amongst a field of stolen ship beams and scraps of sailcloth.

The Sea Witch was waiting for him, an eel curled around her neck as a boa and a lamprey at her bosom like a pendant.

“I had expected you sooner. You are a fool,” she said, and he could find no answer to the surety in her eyes. “You wish to go to the land as a human on human legs, and court a man with values you do not and cannot understand, and obtain a soul you were never meant to have; but I shall still give you what you ask of me, if you ask for it in full knowledge that you shall suffer. For not only is your task difficult and the transformation permanent but the magic required is arcane and unwieldy; the potion you must drink at the beach-side will tear the limbs from your tail, and while you will move as gracefully as you float in the water, each step will bring as intense a pain as walking on knives, and will wound you as such. Will you bear it?”

“Yes,” said the mer-prince, without hesitation. He would miss his family and his home, but the thought of remaining in the purgatory of his longing was more painful than any knife.

“The transfer of souls is a tricky business, and tied to the magic. You will need to win the full and complete love of this human, so that he would abandon his house and legacy as you will do, and then you must join your bodies together as one. If he grows to love another, and they are joined in your place, when the sun’s light breaks on them the next morning you shall turn to sea foam as your kin have always done. Will you risk it?”

“Yes,” he said, eyes sure.

“That is not the whole of it, for magic necessitates payment, and I will need your tongue to work the draught. The price is the best of your qualities, and yours is that sonorous voice. It may have done you well in winning your man, but you will have to do without it through your face and your gracefulness and your actions. Will you give it to me?”

He wavered then, the path to his success seeming to grow murky and overgrown, but then he thought of the bright laughing eyes and it became clear once more. 

“Yes.”

The Sea Witch nodded in acknowledgment and began to ready her things.

“I fear this will not end how you imagine, but I will do what you wish of me.”

For a while the witch fussed and cooked and ground away beside the black smoker that curled sooty currents through her hovel before without ceremony she crossed to the fair merman, took his jaw in hand to pull his mouth open and cut his tongue from its stalk, then wordlessly went back to her ministrations. The pain was sudden and intense against the brine, and he could not see the rest of her work through the cloud of blood that sprang for him as he curled about himself and waited for it to abate.

Then she was done, saying, “there you are,” and handed him the small bottle of clear, heavy fluid; quite innocuous from the outside, and he marvelled that such magic could appear such. He thanked her as well as he could and made his way back through the forest of grasping arms that had grown silent at the approach of the potion, then back to the bay and up to the surface for the last time.

The moon hung high in the night sky as he hauled himself up onto the beach as close to the palace steps as he could make it, uncorked the viscous liquid and drank it entire. The pain was immediate and all consuming as the bones of his tail warped, shattered and then reformed and the muscles and skin stretched and split, as though he was torn in two, and he saw nor perceived anything but the destruction and creation of his body. As the sun rose he slowly composed himself, until after several hours of this torment he felt himself again, felt his full size lungs fill with cool morning air, and grew conscious of the prince standing before him, watching him writhe with an intensity of gaze that shocked him after so long being invisible and he looked away to see his own new wonderful and strong legs with such surprise that he made to shout, although nothing more came out from his abused mouth than a mangled howl. The sound was odd enough that the prince asked if he was alright, and the fair merman delighted in hearing himself addressed but could only open his mouth in reply and show him the raw and fresh scabbed wound in place of his tongue; the prince seemed saddened to look on it but asked no further questions, and he could not guess what story the prince had written of his arrival.

He remembered then that the humans wore clothes, and guessed that his appearance must appear remarkable in a different fashion than it did to him, and he hurried to cover himself with his hands as his braid would do nothing. Beside him the prince started, doffing his outer jacket and holding it out where it was gratefully accepted, then accepted also the hand the prince held out to him to help him stand, and as he pulled himself onto feet that screamed pain he lost all the warmth that grasping that hand had engendered in him and broke into a cold sweat; the first sweat of his short life.

Each step was as painful as had been predicted, and the journey up the steps to the castle felt far too long as though he flayed himself each time he touched the cool marble, but his steps were still sure and graceful as though they held no hurt at all and he moved instead to some inner music. As the prince could not ascertain whence he came or by what means through the crude hand signals they had developed he had settled that the stranger must be well-bred; for he danced so prettily and listened so attentively and cleverly to all that the prince said, and must be in fear of some repercussion; for he had been cruelly punished yet was in no great hurry to return home, and so must have been hurt by his homeland. Thus he was made the prince’s gentleman, to ride with him and go with him on their pleasure cruises and attend him at social functions, and was attired in fine clothing and given a room adjacent to his lord’s, that he may be called on whenever necessary.

Once, they hiked high into those snow-crested mountains that he had admired from afar and now looked down onto the sapphire of the sea that sparkled with a beauty he had never before seen, and homesickness brought him fast down the trail marked by his bloody footprints to bathe his aching feet in the water of the ocean, and he was soothed. As he sat by the water he heard singing in the distance, with voices he recognised and while he tried to call to them he only hurt his throat with his keening. Then his sisters swam to him and admonished him, and then every night after he would go to sit with his feet in the water and more of the merpeople would come to the beach and lament their loss of him, even once his father the Sea King and his old withered grandmother, arm-in-arm, and he cried his first salt tears into the ocean at the sight of them.

The more time that he spent with the prince the more his love and admiration grew, and even after they spent the day playing lawn tennis until they were cramped and tired, his magically conjured legs dancing around the court and into easy victories that brought pain unimaginable, he still laughed with the prince as they walked back to their rooms as though nothing was ever the matter. They grew together into easy companionship and he was called on most of all the gentlemen, until the prince felt them as close as brothers and he would embrace him as a brother and kiss his cheek. Only on rare nights would he look at him again with that eagerness on the beach, and never seemed to be any closer to uniting them as one; the prince would exclaim his love to his new found kin loudly to all that would hear and it would burn the fair merman’s ears to hear it and know that it was not what he wanted for them and that the prince was blind to the aspect of his love as the merman was dumb to express it.

“You are the closest to me here,” said the prince one night as they sat out on the balcony and drank liquor, one of the myriad experiences that were entirely foreign to a life lived in water. “You are my equal in appreciating the arts and in courtly dances and athletics; all things bring you joy that is my joy to watch and you attend me with a loyalty and full-heartedness that is a great comfort. The goodness in you reminds me of the one I grew closest to loving, a girl who found me on the shore after I had been near lost in a shipwreck and saved my life, but who lived at the temple and had taken the holy orders, and so I can never love her. Yet when I am with you it becomes easier to forget her and think of brighter futures.”

The merman remembered the woman from the beach that found the prince and raised the alarm, and his heart saddened to wonder why she had won the prince in so little time while after all their months together he had not been able to usurp her. There was time yet while she stayed at the temple, but that he had only made this much progress gave him pause.

Soon after the prince was betrothed to a neighbouring princess, and the groom’s party was assembled and gathered on a great frigate to go and bring them together to be wed. The fair merman thought it good, as while he did not have the prince’s love, no other had as much of a chance as he with the priestess cloistered as she was, and the prince would not love this new incomer. 

“If there must be a wedding,” said the prince to him as they stood looking out the stern window onto clear blue seas, “if my parents will not accept that I can not love her, then I would rather run with you, out into the wide world that you love so much, that we at least can be together free.” Then the prince turned from the sea and kissed him gently on the lips that grew stronger as the merman pulled him towards himself, until they were together sated and stood easy in each other’s arms, heartbeats against each other, and the fair merman felt as though a half of the prince’s soul was already within his chest. They looked out together through the glass onto the wide waves and the prince told him of the wonders that could never be seen from the surface, and the fair merman laughed at the descriptions of things he knew so well told so crudely, and oftentimes a complete fantasy.

Thus time passed and the ocean rolled until they were in the immaculate whitewashed harbour and the gangway was let down to receive the princess while the fair merman looked out on the crowd in confidence and happiness. 

People parted as the royal procession approached, whispers moving through them of how beautiful she was and how her training at the temples of their land had given her a regal bearing and clever mind, and when eventually she arrived at the foot of the ramp it was clear she was indeed a vision of beauty, and he felt the prince beside him start in recognition. 

“I know you from the temple,” he said, and the fair merman’s heart broke in two from the words. “You brought me from the beach and saved my life.” He ran to her and took her in his arms, saying, “if you will have me I would have us married right away.” The princess blushed and nodded and soon they were all wrapped up in the preparations for the reception to happen that night, as the sun set, in a large and gloriously decorated that was erected on the deck of their vessel. There was very little time left for him to think as they bustled through the preparations, although at one point the prince brought him to one side with a smile wide on his face that only deepened the sadness in his heart. “It was her all along, and now I am to be made the happiest man on Earth. I know you will share in my happiness, as we have shared all things.” The fair merman smiled and bowed, and thought of the death and oblivion that waited for him at dawn’s light. 

The wedding was loud and festive in the largest cathedral of the city, all bedecked in flowers and accompanied by loud and boisterous trumpets, and it rolled off the fair merman like so much seawater against the gloom of his mind. They processed back to the ship in merriment that felt like a funeral march as his feet burned and the notes rang sour in his ears, and the sight of the ship decorated in celebration as it had been on his birthday when he first came to the surface was a cruel blow, but he bore it as well as he could, and this time when the sailors danced their jigs on the deck he joined them, jumping higher into the air than any of the others and drawing gasps from all who saw him as he gallivanted. Blood followed him through the air as his feet bled the fastest they ever had, yet his heart bled more as he watched the prince and his bride huddled close in their bliss. This night was to be his last, and so he made sport of it and gave the best spectacle that he possibly could, pushed the thought of all that he had lost and sacrificed in silence for this unattainable love to the back of his mind as he caroused with the sailors and gentlemen alike. The happy couple disappeared into their tent and the heartache came upon him again as the ship calmed so as to not disturb them and he was left alone with himself, looking out to sea to think of his final few hours.

Voices came to him in harmony then through the still of the night and his sisters were there, bobbing in the sea with their heads shaved and shining in the moonlight. “We traded our hair to the Sea Witch for this knife,” his eldest sister said, and held out to him a blade that flashed with a vicious edge. “Sink it in his heart before the first ray of light touches you and his blood will undo your transformation so you can return to us for the rest of your long life, and take your place after our father is foam.” The fair merman took the knife from her so they would be at peace and leave him, although he knew that he would make a poor king as he was, sad and downtrodden and the love of life a strain on him. He considered the blade, oblivion and the long lost soul of the prince, and made for the tent.

They lay tangled together on the bed, the princess curled on his chest and his hand at her waist. The merman approached them and passed his fingers lightly over the princes cheek and pressed a kiss to his raven hair, grasping the handle of the knife tighter in his hand. With their faces still close he heard the princess’s name spill from his lips and his resolve left him, the knife clattering dully to the blanketed ground. They had a future together full of happiness and love, two souls bound as one; whereas by sacrificing his love he would have a life of agonised guilt far worse than the pain that yet lanced him. 

He turned from them and left the tent into the cold night, at peace with this one last sacrifice for the sake of his love above all the ones he had made before. They would never know what happened to him, but there would be too much joy in their lives to ponder it too close, and they would live full lives; he found that he could, at last, be happy for them, even as it hurt him. With one last look behind at where his prince lay, he watched the dawn begin to break over the sea and cast himself from the ship’s railing, turning to sea foam even as his body hit the water.


End file.
